AuthorTopic: 18if (Read 494 times)

My number one concerns with shows that are abstract or psychedelic, like this one, is whether all the craziness has any point. The fact that we're invading dreams Inception style puts the art to good use in the characterization department. I also really appreciate a protagonist who can roll with the punches, and has a pair on him. Seems like a winner.

Uh, wow. This MC is the opposite of the classic fettered, worry-wart, nice-guy anime protagonist. Does this make him an awful person? I don't know, but god damn is it hard to feel sympathy for the killers.

Multi-media project? Oh boy.**** this is amazing - but then it went full lawlpreachy commentary. If this is a series of one-offs wherein they solve boring, trite personalty flaws then what a waste of both artistic and directing splendor

2:

Less trip and more plot this episode. Plot was a mistake.I love this art style. Morimoto Kouji's hand is very much apparent.This was very much a Freddy Krueger "fall asleep and you die" psychological thing. But they never did what makes such narratives interesting: Namely, collapse of delineated reality/dream as the brain becomes increasingly more exhausted. ShameThis appears to be more ambitious than Yumekui Merry but lesser than any Satoshi Kon affair.This episode's "boring, trite personality flaw" had a bit more bite. The tone and atmosphere was entirely different and I am curious to see if they can keep each episode so distinguished from one another.

Anime pulls the whole "not convicted cause minor" thing quite often and I find it hard to believe, given the brutality and gruesomeness of this case, that three 16 year olds wouldn't have been tried as adults. Though I don't know if Japan has automatic transfer laws.

In ep 1 we see a nice trippy fun kaleidoscopic red-queen romp, then in ep 2 we get hit with a gruesome horror splatterfest (with the MC going full Freddy Krueger), then in ep 3 it strips gears again and becomes a Yuichi and Shiori tearjerker, complete with the girl with the vague terminal illness doing the whole 'I want to experience going to high school and falling in love with a boy before I die' wish fulfillment trope. We get hit with more full-on romantic dying clichés than Love Story (1970), complete with the slowing electrocardiogram monitor, the caring and endearing MC tenderly embracing the girl as she smiles bravely, her going poof in his arms in an explosion of glittering sakura blossoms (SAO), the sad piano plinking, his standing outside alone grieving under the red sunset (huh?), her body laying in the hospital bed in silhouette, his head dropped down onto her prostrate form, and finally a single sakura blossom falling on her slightly smiling visage, all in far too short a time for the audience to connect to any of it emotionally.

Not only do the tone and writing style totally change with each ep, but there are big shifts in art direction and character design as well (e.g., the distracting hashmark lines drawn on the girls faces in ep 3), all of which combine together to give the viewer a fatal case of C5 whiplash.

I tried looking up the name of who is directing and writing this series, however the staff credits shown by MAL, Wiki, and ANN (and the show itself) are all different. MAL states that "18if is part of a multi-media project that also includes a mobile game and a virtual reality game", so I am guessing that this is a compendium of loosely connected material derived from multiple sources.

With how incredibly distinct each episode has been, be it the tone, concept, or shot composition, I am exceedingly interested in the staff(mainly the director(s), writer(s) and animator(s) beyond the aforementioned Morimoto Kouji).

With both this episode and the last this show is becoming a watchable The World Only God Knows. If that is the extent of this show's ambitions I'll be deeply upset. Or maybe this is more of a -monogatari installment. The main dude even looks like Arararagagi. Or is it more a Jun Maeda affair. Shallow comparisons aside, this show is quite the beast and I have no idea what to expect come next episode. I eagerly await more.

Whenever I watch an anime, all I ask is that it keep me pleasantly distracted for 22 minutes. It could be with nice visuals, or an unpredictable storyline that keeps me guessing, or just something that puts a smile on my face to start the day.

These eps did all three better than anything I've seen in a long while. Ep 5 starts with what looks like a bog standard story about the diva who just wants to live a normal life like everyone else. We've seen it a million times. There's more to life than just fame and fortune, yadda yadda. But then it inverts, and the inversion makes total sense. And then MIND BLOWN.

Ep 6 is a visual treat. (I'm starting to understand why my brother loved Voltron so much as a kid.) Yes, anime can be a form of escapism when your life sucks. So do you lose yourself in it as you spiral down, or do you pick yourself up and walk away from it? Again we get an unexpected resolution.

Let's see, nice visuals? Holy buckets. Stop motion with paper mache and cardboard cutouts! I've seen it before in what... western style, French? No, wait.. Kubo and the Two Strings (amazing 2016 animated film that was ignored in the theaters) kinda sorta? I can't place the style better than that. The second half got a little sloppy with the paper mache effect as the CG became more apparent (the gears) but it more than made up for it with...

Unpredictable storyline? Oh my. Dreams are like that, meandering with their own internal illogic that makes sense only within the dream, with emotional pericopes out of time as the mind tries to work out its memories through the hippocampus. But then at the end the plot resolved and connected it all together. I caught the Tin Man ref (heart removed to prevent guilt) but the references to 'King Pol' escaped me. It sounded very much like another classical fable like Oz that I feel like I should have heard of before, but Google was inconclusive.

Smile on my face? No, but that was not the intent of the ep, only a catharsis. Still, it was done much better than the forced downer in ep 3. Be sure to watch past the ending credits for a more bittersweet ending.